IS IT SAFE TO LOOK AT THE MOON?

The Boney Girl

Today, I visited a friend in hospital. She is a cripple. She went shopping one day. While in the shop, she stepped on a drop of water. Who and how the drop of water was on the clean floor nobody knew. My friend was always a careful lady, walks slowly and she is ever so careful she did not step on anything; like a drop of water, a small piece of paper, a leaf off a bunch of flowers, or anything at all. She is such a careful woman, who knows how it is to be stepped on.

You see, years and years ago, long before she and I met and became friends, Mercy was a very active girl: she loved jumping rope with friends; she loved running and catching butterflies; she runs errands for her mother; and most of all she is the one and only girl in class who can outrun the passenger train that picks up children on their way to school. The train was old and practically ancient, an old passenger bus that was converted into a train.

Mercy loved running; in fact, she was the champion runner in our class, the only girl who can outrun a train. It was one day when the physical education teacher, a matronly woman of 50 who started it all. She created the test: the fastest runner in school; and she must be a girl. Well, you should have seen all the girls in class go for it. Among them was Mercy, Every year, every girl in school entered the contest. And every year Mercy came out the fastest runner.

You see, Mercy was what they call a bony girl. She had bones all right because she was ever so slim and her body was mere bones; without fat bubbles in her tummy nor any part of her body. Her arms were as bony as her legs. Although her body was solid with flesh and bones, when it came to her legs there was a picture of just bones. As I mentioned earlier, her legs were practically solid bones wrapped in such a. tiny bit of flesh.